A joint resolution passed by Congress in 1988 authorized the president to proclaim Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Public Law 100-402, which extended Hispanic Heritage Week to a full month, was filled with editing marks.

But President Ronald Reagan embraced it, celebrating it at the White House. San Antonian Gil Coronado, a retired Air Force colonel credited with doing the legwork to get lawmakers to sign on to the effort, was there.

“They didn't know much about Hispanics,” Coronado said. “In 1988, there was no general acceptance.”

Latino appointees were few and their numbers in Congress could be counted on one hand, Coronado said. The 1980s had been labeled “the Decade of the Hispanic,” but many Latinos begged to differ.

Still, the commemoration was viewed as a major win, if only a ceremonial one.

As the observance comes to a close Saturday, several San Antonio Latino scholars and leaders credit the annual commemoration with helping raise awareness not only of Latino contributions to U.S. life and culture, but of Latinos themselves.

They also stressed there's more work to do.

UTSA President Ricardo Romo, a historian, remembers teaching in East Los Angeles in the 1960s.

“There was a feeling,” he said of that time, “that we were a non-achieving minority, and it was not true.”

Texas gained four congressional districts as a result of the 2010 Census, she noted, with Latinos accounting for 65 percent of the state's growth.

“Yet the state created no new Hispanic-majority districts, and no more seats in the state House, or the state Senate or the state Board of Education,” Perales said. “Our progress was made invisible in these new state redistricting plans.”

“I've said for years, here in Texas and in our own community, we need to do more to highlight our own Hispanic roots.”

“When we begin to finally know our history, then you know where you fit in,” Rodriguez said. “We're doing a lot of pioneering, but we still have a ways to go.”

Trinity University scholar Arturo Madrid said, in part because of awareness efforts, “Latinos are now part of the American consciousness, especially to the people who want to sell to them.”

What the commemoration needs nationally is a look at “what it means, where it should take us,” he said.

“On the surface, I think it has made people aware of the population for the positive,” said Josephine Mendez-Negrete, an associate professor of bicultural-bilingual studies at UTSA.

Heightened awareness about Latinos also may have a negative impact, she said, especially among those fearful of “the revolutionary demographic shift that has taken place.”

“It's great that we're affirmed and validated, and our presence is recognized one month of the year, but our contributions are centennial and millennial,” she said. “We need to be recognized for the contributions we have given this nation, beginning with being of this land before the region was part of the United States.”

Coronado, a Lanier High School dropout who rose to presidential appointee, measures the success of National Hispanic Heritage Month with his own ruler — a presidential one.

Over the years, he has spoken to numerous students from preschool to college. He's never heard one of them say they want to become president of the United States.

“I'm very pleased and honored that (Hispanic Heritage Month) has really has taken off,” Coronado said. “But I firmly believe that until we have Hispanic representation at the very highest levels of government, corporate America and other sectors, we're not going to be able to dramatically increase awareness and appreciation of our contributions to America.”

“All of this will be second nature when we have a President Ramirez or a Secretary Gonzalez,” he said. “It needs to happen to Hispanics.”